(You see how I didn't title this post "An Exciting Announcement" because then BAM you would immediately have thought I was pregnant!)

Well, all these fancy bloggers have been writing books lately...  Jen, Haley, Cari, Kelly, Kendra, Auntie Leila...  Who's next?

ME!

Well, okay, not me.

John Paul.

See, he took it upon himself to write his first book today, and I'm convinced it's going to be a bestseller.

Magic Tree House #12: Polar Bears PAST Bedtime  (Okay, the title needs work...)

"Jack and annie, would you like some hot coaco?"

Also, "Cluster 1" because he thought it was funnier than "Chapter"

II POPE WAS IN ROME.  So they went there.

"How do you do carrots?"  Rihgt NOW.

red and blue...  ... T.D.

Also, whoops!  Chapter 6!  Not Cluster!  Clearly some editing needs to be done...

Also, can't imagine where he learned to overuse ellipses...

Thh!  Thh!  This was as usual.

Chapel 8!  Another joke!

And we even have the proper library designation, JFIC.  But whoops, the author accidentally revealed too much of his real name by writing "JP."  Luckily he changed it to "JACK" and nobody will ever be the wiser.

The plot!  The character development!  The lower case a's that look like tadpoles!

Publishers, we will be accepting contract offers whenever you see fit!

Basically, we're going to be rich (see how I tied it into Theme Thursday there?  And Abbey's #holylens?).

Raising Kids Who Love Saints: We're Doing It Right

It's not often that I reflect on a particular aspect of my parenting and think, "Man, I'm doing that RIGHT!"  I'll be honest, there's just so much uncertainty, so many variables, just so MUCH that sometimes I feel like I'm flying blind here.

But this morning I left Cecilia and John Paul with art supplies - markers, paper, scissors, the like - and I went downstairs to get dressed while the babies napped.  I'm always really excited to see what they make when things are totally open-ended, and I wasn't disappointed today:



"I'm Saint Wucy because I'm holdin' my eyes!"

Yes, she spent that entire time very carefully drawing two purple circles and very carefully cutting them out so that she could be St. Lucy with her eyes on a platter.

Parenting.  Nailed it.

(John Paul drew himself some coins and cut them out, in case you were curious.  One of them was a $200 coin.)

And on a typical day I'm treated to quotes like this:

Is his homeschool showing?

John Paul, immediately upon waking in the morning and coming to the table:  Ah...  I just need to write my name in this box...

I look over to see that he has written "St. Justin"

Me: So you're St. Justin this morning?
John Paul:  Yeah.  I'm a martyr.
Me:  And how were you martyred?
John Paul, humming:  I was just...  Humming...

Not outside the realm of possibilities...

Or this:

Cecilia, waking up from her nap:  Mom, I'm St. Agnes!  And you're Mawwy!  And Dad is Jesus!  And John Paul is Padwe Pio.

Later...

Cecilia:  And Aunt Sister is the soldier dat killed me!

Or even this, from the youngest in our family:

Mary Claire, pointing out every religious statue or book she can find:  Pope!  Mawwy!  Jee-US!  Toby (Maximilian Kolbe)!  Woocy (St. Lucy)!  Pio!!!

Don't worry, Elizabeth is just as obsessed - she likes to carry around an adult book on St. John Vianney chanting "Honey! Honey!"

I may have spent the entire day today either reading saint biographies to the kids or helping them act out different martyrdom stories.  Mary Claire and Elizabeth know that when they pick up a toy sword they need to make a "whoosh" sound and pretend to chop off their own heads, so often have they been companions of the martyred saints.

It makes it seem like we have them in saint book camp all day long, doesn't it?  But I promise we don't!  There's still a healthy dose of Angelina Ballerina and Magic School Bus and Daniel Tiger (although Cecilia asked me today, "Why doesn't Daniel Tiger pway before he eats or goes to bed?" I told her maybe he does it in private...), and characters from movies, books, and TV shows find their way into daily play easily enough.  But I'd say they're FAR more interested in the lives of the saints and biblical characters than anyone else.

And for good reason!  You know who's WAY more fascinating than Cinderella?  St. Elizabeth of Hungary - a saint who was a PRINCESS!  And sure, those superheroes might get injured, but St. Sebastian got shot full of arrows AND LIVED.

I think that simply immersing children in a culture devoted to those who have gone before us is HUGE in establishing an interest in those saints, and encouraging the desire to eventually become a saint.  Mary Claire and Elizabeth are 16 months old and are ALWAYS talking about the icons on our walls and the statues on the mantle.  And all the kids bring me saint books aaaaall day long to read to them - Cecilia in particular is on a virgin martyr kick right now.  Just having those books is enough - some days they don't get read at all, but it's amazing how quickly they learn to recognize particular saints just by seeing pictures of them often enough.

So what's worth owning?

I started a Pinterest board here with some of our favorite books so far - sometimes it's surprising to me what the kids love, because I think they won't be drawn to the old-fashioned pictures, but they LOVE those!

If your kids are old enough for read alouds, check out the Encounter the Saints Series.

There are plenty of DVDs out there too, like The Day the Sun Danced, which tells the story of Fatima (I need more of these, if only because it's HILARIOUS watching the kids act out the overly-dramatic lines from the movie).

We also just got a free Holy Heroes CD with the stories of Blessed Imelda Lambertini and St. Juan Diego, and the kids adore it.  Cecilia tells me that Blessed Imelda, St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, St. Lucy, and St. Kateri are her favorite saints.  Because they're girls.  And they're pretty.

What do your kids love when it comes to saints?  Who are their particular favorites?  I'm always so amazed by how much these little ones love the saints, when I feel like I didn't know anything about them when I was their age!

WIWS: Matching Babies and an Exhausting Mass

Every couple of months I think, "Hey, let's do something really stupid!  Let's try going to Mass as a family!"

And every time Andrew's like, "It's not going to work.  Everybody's going to behave terribly."

And every single time he's right.

Seriously, I feel like I've been exercising for hours with all the "Up! Down! Up! Down!" and all the whisper-reading of our Catholic board books and the like...  And I'm not even the one who took the babies to the back of the church for most of the consecration.  Seriously folks, it's a 45-minute Mass and we barely survived.  Sigh.  John Paul and Cecilia were pretty great until the end, when Cecilia had a freak-out because she wanted to sit on the other side of me and John Paul was there.  She had to be taken out for the first time in MONTHS!

So we'll try again at Easter...  Until then, tag-teaming it is!  And to think I used to think that was a cop-out...

But at least they're cute?

But perhaps not the most photogenic...

A bang trim may be in order one of these days...

Okay, I give up...

And I was really glad that we had studied the readings yesterday, so at least I felt like I was halfway paying attention?  And speaking of the readings, last night I told Cecilia we were going to read the story of the Transfiguration and she said, "What's dat?"  "We'll read it in a minute and then you'll find out!" "Oh, Moses and Ewijah!"

Seriously, this child never forgets anything.  We last read about it in AUGUST and she remembers the story.  Ridiculous child.

Here's what I wore - mostly a repeat, and hopefully this will be the last week those tights are in the rotation!

Linking up with Fine Linen & Purple - check out more Sunday style!

The Playground with No Baby Swings: Never Again.

It was 70 the other day - FINALLY!  Spring!  So I loaded the kids up in the stroller and started off for a walk around the block.  Except John Paul REALLY wanted to go to the playground.

Who needs exercise when you're pushing 110+ pounds of kids in a stroller?  Okay, the big kids walked most of the way...

Weeeell...  Okay?  I remembered Andrew saying that the last time he took the kids to the playground, the babies were happy hanging out in the stroller watching them play.  So we walked the 0.6 miles and arrived at the lovely park with awesome HUGE climbing structures and absolutely nothing for the babies to do.

Within 7 seconds Mary Claire wanted out of the stroller.  So did Elizabeth.

Oh, did I mention they weren't even wearing shoes?

So I hoped that maybe they would be happy to sit on a bench with me?

And by sit on a bench I mean immediately climb down off the bench and test just how edible wood chips are.

John Paul takes off climbing this enormous faux-rock formation and Cecilia decides SHE wants to climb it, too.  I tell her no, she's too young.  Within 4 seconds she had scaled her way to the top and couldn't figure out how to get back down.

Awesome.

Babies on the bench, Mom trying to coach the 3-year-old down from the VERY tall peak, I look away for a second and hear ear-piercing screams and see that, oh yes, she has fallen off (thank goodness for those wood chips, which provided a nice cushy spot for her little booty to plop down).  So I leave the babies on the bench and retrieve the sobbing mess, who thankfully decides she's okay within 10 seconds (and the ONE other family at the playground is proooobably looking at me with crazy judging eyes because WHY would this insane lady bring all these tiny kids for a playground that is clearly not made for them?  Actually they probably thought I was the babysitter...).

So we move to the slightly less-dangerous side of the playground and the babies practice climbing up the slide and eating dirt while John Paul and Cecilia do their thing.  Thank goodness they were willing to abide by my "5 more minutes" warning which really ended up being a "1 more minute" warning - in Mom time sometimes 5 minutes takes 30, sometimes it takes 1.  Magic, I tell you.

But seriously, what is WITH these playgrounds with no swings?   I mean, I get the no "big kid" swings - those things are just an accident waiting to happen.  But the baby swings?  Somewhere contained to put my twins so that they feel like they're playing without actually being near wood chips?  So necessary.

I'm just at a complete loss for how to get outside with all 4 kids...  I'm thinking they'll be obsessed with the water table when it gets warm enough, and I'm planning on making one of those "tents" out of garden stakes and pole beans or snap peas or something, which I think will occupy them.  And we may also just need to get a second baby swing for the swing set...

Experienced moms of twins:  What do you do?  Where do you GO?  Or do you just not go anywhere?

WWWS & a Scripture Craft

One of my Lenten goals is to do a Bible study with the kids every week based on that Sunday's Mass readings.  This week we did it on Saturday morning and read the readings in John Paul's Magnifikid - seriously, get a subscription if you don't have one!  It's for ages 6-12 but John Paul has loved it since he started reading.  And Cecilia is not even close to reading, so she's satisfied with last week's Magnifikid as her "own" copy every week... 

Then we read the same readings in their Catholic Children's Bible, which has a slightly simpler translation.  We discussed obedience, sin (seriously, the number of times per day when I have to answer questions like, "What is sin?" and "Why did Satan try to tempt Jesus?" is a little ridiculous!), the Fall, and redemption.  

And then, of course, we did a craft!

A serpent amongst apples in the Garden of Eden.

Okay, yes, not necessarily an apple - but it was an easy way to tie in a craft!

Plus, you know, they love painting...

And we happened to have a VERY wrinkly apple that had escaped being eaten by hiding in the back of the fruit drawer since we picked apples in...  October.  Yes, I know it's March.

Next we'll be talking about Abraham - I feel like we've mostly skipped past that story in favor of other Old Testament stories, so it'll be interesting to delve into the whole thing with them!

Oh, and look who was awake for pictures this week!  Babies everywhere!  I blame them for the tank top pulled down too low...  All nursing, all the time.

So close to spring...  So I'm close to retiring my boots!

And a lovely overexposed shot!

Finally, an adorable little ballerina in her Lenten jumper :)

Yup, she wins the liturgically appropriate contest!

For more Sunday style, check out Fine Linen & Purple!